The settlement along with nearby others such as Beauvale and Newthorpe form part of the wider Eastwood built-up area.

The placename was formerly known as Greasley-Moor-Green, and was possibly singularly known as The Moor or The Green interchangeably, prior to the present combined spelling.

[2] Moorgreen was part of the Greasley Castle estate, and possibly contained the home farm for it, with some probable villein tenements and a few labourers’ abodes, and it therefore was not mentioned separately in Domesday.

[2] In the 14th century at Kimberley Hugh de Cressy and his wife Cecilia, rented properties to the priory of nearby Beauvale, and in default of payment they would be entitled to seize the priory lands (among other places) at the Moorhouses, which probably by then was the name for Moorgreen.

[3] In the middle 1600s nonconformists worshipped at Moorgreen in an old barn, with the site later hosting a chapel, with a prior vicar of Greasley, Robert Smalley, helping to establish it in 1662.

[6] Features of the area were referenced by the local Eastwood-born fiction author D. H. Lawrence in a number of his early 20th-century writings, including:[7][8] While much of the area surrounding the residential settlement is agricultural with nearby farms working the land, there is also the Moorgreen Industrial Park on Engine Lane to the north of the village, supporting small industry with premises and facilities.